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I kissed comment culture goodbye

(sustainableviews.substack.com)
256 points spyckie2 | 2 comments | 05 Sep 25 20:11 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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nostrademons ◴[05 Sep 25 20:59 UTC] No.45143535[source]▶
I actually made plenty of friends commenting, in the early days of the Internet, but it wasn't just commenting. It was that a comment on a message board would lead to following them on LiveJournal, which would lead to AIM chats, which would lead to volunteer positions and real-life meetups and being invited to their weddings and a job referral to Google in the late-00s.

I've got plenty of friends now. Most are not the ones I met online; that was a phase of our life that has largely passed us by, though I keep up with a couple. I still comment on things, but it leads to more shallow relationships if any, but perhaps that's because I'm not really looking for friends anymore.

But I think that the bigger reason I'm reconsidering commenting online is: I can never be sure if the other person is real anymore. And even if they are, it often doesn't feel like they're debating in good faith. A lot of recent Reddit comment threads have really felt like I'm arguing with an AI or Russian troll farm. Social media now feels like a propaganda cesspool rather than something where people come together to share disparate views.

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jchw ◴[05 Sep 25 21:32 UTC] No.45143874[source]▶
The entire Internet now is a giant confirmation bias machine, which is impressive considering it also exposes you to unlimited conflicting viewpoints no matter how crazy they are. I think this is just a natural consequence of structuring everything around engagement. Even when you're seeing multiple viewpoints, it's rarely going to be in a positive light.
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_mu ◴[05 Sep 25 23:12 UTC] No.45144816[source]▶
> I think this is just a natural consequence of structuring everything around engagement.

Agree - for me this leads to the conclusion that some services should not be run for-profit, or at least they should be run for public benefit. Similar to how governments in some countries own part of the railway.

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rusk ◴[06 Sep 25 07:47 UTC] No.45147404[source]▶
I’m not against for profit so much as the monetisation of engagement. The web has always had a revenue problem. For a time this was solved by “advertising” and that was massively successful and what we see here is the result of that. There has historically been a reluctance to ask people for money - handling money brings a whole host of other unglamorous problems.

As we saw with Steam the last few weeks.

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1. Kye ◴[06 Sep 25 08:05 UTC] No.45147484[source]▶
The people who have always had trouble finding platforms and payment processors also always had trouble finding advertisers. Random demonetization on YouTube is a huge problem, for example.
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2. jchw ◴[06 Sep 25 09:26 UTC] No.45147837[source]▶
Porn, piracy and other questionable sites have always had a lot of fun when it comes to finding advertisers, but it does seem like it's gotten worse over time, encompassing many more sites. It also seems like whether an advertiser is concerned about where exactly their algorithmic ads appear is pretty inconsistent, too.

What I think is interesting is that it seems like Japan is less affected by this. I know I've seen major Japanese companies advertising on sites like Pixiv and Misskey, which have both had some trouble with American payment processors. Heck, I'm pretty sure I've seen Ubiquiti ads when browsing Misskey.

I guess the anglosphere Internet is somewhat impacted by the presence of more "puritan" influence than some other global packets of the Internet. Not 100% sure what to make of that.